The Syrian crisis reveals contradictions in the Islamic world

By Vestnik Kavkaza

The second international conference Geneva-2 on a settlement of the Syrian crisis begins in Switzerland today. It is planned that representatives of the Syrian government and the foreign Syrian opposition will sit down at the round table under the UN, Russia, the USA, and several European and Arab countries for the first time. However, after long consultations and the opposition’s ultimatum, Iran wasn’t invited to the conference.

Ahead of the conference, the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov commented on the situation.

“At each stage of our cooperation with the USA, John Kerry, just like us and many others, has admitted (publicly, as well) that Iran should play an important role in the search for commonly admissible ways of settling the Syrian crisis. This is the basis of the Russian-American initiative that the “external players”, who can influence the situation in Syria, must be present at the initial stage of the conference. The interests of the issue demand that Iran be represented just like other countries of the region. The National Coalition presented an ultimatum: “Unless you cancel the invitation, in 6 hours we will declare that we are cancelling our flights”. So the situation is not so appealing,” Lavrov believes.

He recalls that the National Coalition is a structure created by several dozens of immigrants. And since the day of its creation, the National Coalition has based itself on the principle of regime change, but this principle is not foreseen by the Russian-American initiative. This initiative is about organizing a conference to start direct dialogue between the Syrian parties to implement the Geneva Communiqué of June 30, 2012. “Now it turns out that the ones who misinterpret the Geneva Communiqué and, essentially, set preliminary conditions for regime change, are largely present among the ones who are invited to the Geneva conference. And Iran does not want the regime to change,” Lavrov  stated.

In fact they demand from Iran to agree to come to Geneva to start talking about regime change. “Everything gets turned upside-down,” the Russian Foreign Minister says. “We also insist that no interpretations of the Geneva Communique should be made, including a change of regime. So we don’t meet the requirements of those who insist that the invitation of Iran be cancelled, should we be left out, too? It makes no sense at all.”

According to Lavrov, the Syrian crisis reveals the long accumulated contradictions in the region, including those inside the Muslim world.  “In this context the absence of Iran would not contribute to the efforts to ensure the  unity of the Muslim world, including the fight against terrorism that is a threat for all of us and all the Muslims. By the way, if we are talking about who takes which conditions and with whom one can negotiate, here is a good example - Taliban. To talibs acknowledge the principles of the conflict settlement that are outlined in the resolutions of the UN Security council? No. But the UN and the US negotiate with them and try to find compromises. Pragmatisms is what we need while the ideologized approaches, one-sided decisions and the attempt to change the previous agreements will lead to no good.”